The tiller arrived late Friday and I fitted it Saturday afternoon. Due I am sure to my imprecise measurements, some sanding was needed to reduce the butt end by perhaps 1/16”, so to use my power sander I plugged into shore power for the fourth time in a year. The other three were to use a power hand saw.
My thought was to drill the three holes for the bolts to attach the new tiller to the rudder shaft so it could go in place quickly if needed, but then remove it and continue to use the old tiller. However, once the new one, made of mahogany and ash by RudderCraft, was attached, I liked it too much to remove and the old one will be the spare.
I ordered the tiller unfinished and have applied eight or nine coats of Deks Olje No. 1 over the past three days, with more to come.
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On Saturday the home page of this site was hacked. I don’t often visit that page, going directly to the journal page, but a couple of you did and emailed me. Thank you, Eric and Steve.
I don’t recall the exact details, but the page had a black background, lettering at the top stating that it had been hacked by people with Islamic intent, contained some Arabic script and some in English, which I believe was from the Koran, and an Islamic chant played. As far as I could determine, the rest of the site was untouched.
I didn’t have time to deal with the problem that evening, but worried that my laptop may have been compromised because earlier in the week I ran an ad on Craigslist to sell the Norvane for the man who gave it to me, and in addition to a half dozen serious inquires, received a huge amount of spam, some of which I did not recognize as such until I opened it.
I woke Sunday morning to find with some relief an email from MacHighway, which hosts this site, stating that they had changed my passwords and that I should under no circumstances try to use the old ones. As the day progressed, more information was received stating that the home pages of many of the sites they host had been hacked--I do not yet know how--and were being restored. Mine was by late afternoon.
As Billy Pilgrim notes repeatedly in SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, “So it goes.” In the Internet Age.
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Over the weekend I met a young man who with some friends biked across the country. east to west. He has written about the journey well and enthusiastically at THEY RODE WEST, which I started reading last evening.
I’m going to follow the whole way. Some of you might enjoy doing so, too.